PT test tracks too long for Air Force
The Air Force Times reports that PT test tracks at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas and Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts were too long, 85 feet and 360 feet respectively, and may have cost 59 airmen their careers as a result.
The Goodfellow track was last accurately measured in 2010. At some point, its lanes were adjusted, Brzozowske said, and were either not remeasured afterward or were remeasured inaccurately. This caused 18 airmen to fail the fitness test who would otherwise have passed, the Air Force said.
The Hanscom track had construction done after its last accurate measure in 2008 and was similarly not remeasured or remeasured inaccurately, Brzozowske said. As a result, 41 airmen there failed their fitness tests.
However, it may be difficult to tell whether the Air Force’s estimates include every airman negatively affected by the incorrectly measured tracks.
Yeah, well, they might have tried to pass with the max score rather than the minimum.The Air Force should have kept their mouths shut, fixed the problem and never admitted that this was a problem.
The Air Force said all affected airmen are being notified and will be provided avenues for remedy.
Brzozowske said that for airmen who are still on active duty, this means their fitness scores will be adjusted and any personnel actions that were taken as a result of those fitness scores will be remedied. She said airmen who were affected should work with their chain of command, force support squadron, legal office and the Air Force Personnel Center to correct their records.
Airmen who have since left should contact the Discharge Review Board or the Board for Correction of Military Records, she said.
They should publish a list so we all know who the hairy-backed Marys are who only do the bare minimum.
Category: Air Force
Everyone would have received a lower score (except for the rabbits, that is).
And if the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum.
The Air Force has PT Tests?
You have got to be shitting me. If you can’t walk…and I mean walk a mile and a half in over 14 minutes, take the uniform off.
Fat pig eye pieces of shit are a disgrace. At my age I can smoke while carrying a passed out hooker to the free clinic in less time.
Wow, what a group of lucky people that make this list of hard chargers.
Hey Dave,
How about this for a trip down Marine Corps Memory Lane?
Remember all of the Marines that we knew ‘back in the day’ who could still run a high 1st Class Marine Corps PFT while they were hung over like sick dogs? And then light up a Marlboro immediately after they had finished the 3-mile run?
Yup, there was nothing quite like holding a fellow Marine’s feet while he was doing sit-ups during a PFT the morning after he had been out guzzling Budweiser at Tobie’s, the Driftwood, or the Brown Bagger the night before. Yeah, buddy. Oh yeah.
Ahhhh, the memories.
Ha! I remember those days fondly. I had a Master Guns in Okinawa (7th Crime Bn!) who gave those of us too hungover the morning off of PT. We got recalled at noon and he ran us around the perimeter for the next eight hours. I’m pretty sure I died several times that day.
(And none of us complained, filed a stress card, cried or otherwise tried to weasel out of it)
Maybe the additional weight of a PT belt causes all this extra stress. I wonder if these ladies every ran 3 miles in a gas mask? Or, my fave “Run till ha puke” fridays.
I couldn’t wait to get all that nicotine back into my lungs where it belonged.
Seriously, 14 min to do a mile and a half? I can not even imagine that. Between the Soviet and the Hooters girl I get more of a workout than that before my coffee in the morning.
Dave, how’s this for a nightmare? I was standing in the back row of the headquarters company PT formation in the brigade HQ parking lot hungover all to hell when the sergeant major called me front and center to lead the PT that morning. The brigade commander and all the staff I worked with were in the front rank, all hard eyeballs on Ol’ Poe and some of NCO’s smirking at me, knowing my condition.
I fucked up multiple times but made it through, thoroughly embarrassed.
Apparently it didn’t hurt me too badly cause that same colonel a few weeks later personally offered me the brigade’s next E-7 stripe if I’d re-up. Turned him down to get out and finish college on the newly re-enacted G.I. Bill.
Fifty years later, I’m still embarrassed when I think about that morning.
OK, Dave, I’m a bit confused. You said ” If you can’t walk…and I mean walk a mile and a half in over 14 minutes, take the uniform off.”
a) Did you mean “in under 14 minutes”?
b) As an OFWG* I’m pretty tickled when I can maintain a 4 mph pace on a hike. Last year in a local fundraiser ruck march I took first in category (Individual Heavy) with a 45 lb pack maintaining a 3.85 mph pace over 5 miles. 4 mph puts me doing a mile-and-a-half in about 22 minutes, 3.85 in around 25 minutes. A runner ought to be able to do 1.5 in 10, oughtn’t they?
FWIW, I’ve never been a runner. And now the Doc tells me to not run at all for the sake of my knees and back.
*Old Fat White Guy
Ya, I probably should have said under 14 but I looked up the AF PFT requirements. At my age it is well over 14 minutes.
I understand it the AF but if they kept their dick beaters off the doughnuts now and then it might help.
A news item about some wimpy guy who tried to join the Army and was unable to meet PFT requirements got me to look up the minimum requirements for women in the Army and the Marine Corps. The 46-year-old WMs have to be able to run three miles in 36 minutes, minimum.
That’s running a 12-minute mile for a middle-aged woman. I can walk faster than that.
But these AF dudes can’t even manage the distance. Oh, dear. How sad!
Considering all branches have relatively the same requirements based on distance and age… I guess you really are hard charging…
http://www.military.com/media/military-fitness/air-force-fitness-charts.pdf
http://www.military.com/military-fitness/army-fitness-requirements/army-pft-two-mile-run-score-chart#2
http://www.military.com/military-fitness/marine-corps-fitness-requirements/usmc-pft-charts
http://www.nrotc.navy.mil/pdfs/Physical%20Standards.pdf
BTW, This MSgt has never scored below a 90 on his AFPT.
Cheers,
MrFace
I’m of two minds.
Part of me says, a standard is a standard, and if someone meets the standard they should be given credit for it.
The other part wants to laugh at people who cut it so close that an extra 85 feet makes them fail.
Part II is winning right now, but I take no pride in that.
If 30 yards, or even 120 yards, of extra running is what pushes you over the edge to failure, knowing it might cost you a career, I don’t know what else can be done to motivate you. The services are probably better off without you.
Hey, I’m going to bat for the USAF on this. The airmen didn’t set the standard, the AF did. One can pass by meeting the minimum or by exceeding it. When the minimum was mistakenly raised, some failed who would have passed. If it had been a written test and some failed because an answer had been incorrectly marked wrong when it was actually correct, who wouldn’t demand that the matter be rectified in favor of those who failed thanks to the correct answer mistakenly marked wrong? What the real issue is here, it looks like, is the low standard that is set in the first place.
Yes, but here’s my problem with it: you do not lose your career over failing a single APFT, at least in the Army. You’re flagged, you do extra PT, and then you’re eventually retested. If you know you’ve failed to meet the standards, your career is on the line, and then you only train enough to run a 9:04 mile pace (maximum run time for under 30 is 13:36), thus failing because the course actually requires an 8:58 mile pace, then you are, by definition, a shitbag.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t fix it, and I agree with the retest, but man, these ain’t exactly sympathetic “victims” to my eyes, at least from a distance…
That’s actually a curious situation, the retest I mean. What that means to me is that an out-of-shape tub o’ lard was just that for some period of time before his PT test. He fails, works hard, passes the retest, and then returns to being an out-of-shape tub o’ lard. That’s a good deal.
That’s definitely a pattern with some. It’s worse in the Reserves, because we NCOs aren’t on the PT field with the Joes every morning – we get them two days/month. And often we can’t even PT those days, because of SRP or SHARP/ACE/EO/Resilience or, God forbid, MOS skills training (it does happen, believe it or not!) So if a guy decides to slack after his APFT, he won’t get tested again for six months, sometimes more – upwards of a year. Fail it and you get 180 days before you can be required to take a new Record APFT. You could spend half your damn contract unable to meet standards.
And then when you fail your second APFT and we file the paperwork for the bar to reenlistment and attempt separation, it never actually goes through – higher echelons always push them back, ask to give the Joe another shot, or say the counselings are insufficient, or etc., etc. I had a 20-year-old guy come to our unit straight from AIT, right before we deployed. I came home and learned he hadn’t passed a PT test that whole time. And he kept failing them, and we’d push paperwork, and it never happened. When I left that unit, it had been FOUR YEARS, and he still hadn’t passed a PT test.
By the way, height/weight is different – if you bust tape, you get tested every month from there forward. If you don’t make progress, you can face separation. Now, you might get push-back from higher again, but there’s no 180-day window or anything.
Maybe the Air Force doesn’t realize you should have alternate “tracks” for doing the run or walk in their case?
Especially being on an AF Base, they should have 4 or 5 and should’ve been using alternate tracks.
But, also looking at their fitness chart, it seems rather strange. They expect males to be 18 percent body fat? But they use the “BMI” chart which is bogus because all that says is, “if you’re this height you should be this weight and if you aren’t, you’re a fat pig!”
Even my Doc and nutritionists don’t bug me about my weight because its not realistic for me being 6’3″ and expected to be 210 pounds thanks to the AMA’s ht/wt chart for insurance from the 50s. (As Ex-PH2 pointed out recently)
They measure the waist, but they don’t base it on anything other than a fixed number for age. So if you’re built like a linebacker, the AF considers you a fat pig who should be kicked out. Even if you can run their pitiful test and do 62 pushups (their max).
“BMI” = Bull$h!t Made Institutional
Height/weight and BMI charts are an excuse for some lazy pogue to not use what is between their ears.
Good lord, at my ever advancing age (and post motorcycle accident ankle break in 3 places) I can still carry my ass up and down a soccer field refereeing and a mile and a half in 14 minutes for an active duty soldier? That’s it????
When I was younger (up until about 45) a mile and a half was maybe 8 minutes and change….if you were taking 14 it was like you were what fucking walking?
While I hear what many are saying about “low standards,” I’ve also seen it from the other side.
Back some time, maybe mid to late 90’s, USAF came out with new and improved standards. No biggy, right? Not exactly. The PT test was so restrictive that normal people could not pass it and remain healthy. If you were anorexic, maybe, but not healthy, fit people.
Point being, when standards don’t measure anything needed to do a job, any job, but are arbitrary measurements instead, there can be very adverse consequences which serve neither the service nor the individuals. Then when even the arbitrary standards are not applied equitably to all who are tested, it’s just absurd.
No, I don’t trust USAF to have meaningful standards because of my personal experience with them. From here it looks like another complete waste of time attempting to apply one-size-fits-all to everyone. That never works out well.
Maybe it will work out better this time around.
I think that is a problem with any metric.
A poorly designed metric does more harm than good.
A poorly thought out metric of physical capability can do a lot of harm. Especially when designed by someone who is taking the latest fitness fads at face value.
Height-weight ratios and BMIs come to mind…
Gee, last year, quite unfit, I took a gambol on the canoe launch trail with a 4.5 lb camera + lens in my hands, goofing off along the way, stopping to shoot pictures here and there, stepping off the trail repeatedly to get a shot, and smell the fresh air, and I still managed to do that in barely an hour. At that slow pace, I was doing about 17 minute per mile – something like that, and I was goofing off on a rough, hilly trail. And I’m an old lady.
The world record (so far) for racewalking is 7.22/mile. And these sluggish waddlers can’t even manage a brief episode that requires movement? How sad is that?
This should give you guys some cheap thrills. 2012 London Womens Racewalking 20 KM finals.
https://youtu.be/1PrR4PjDF8M
Oh, thank you PH2, I have been rejuvenated b/c of that. Well, that and it’s Sammich Friday.
Ham on rye w/spicy brown mustard, two layers.
Jewish rye. Don’t forget the Kosher dill spear. Throw a few chips (Wise) on the plate and I’m hap-hap-happy.
Will do. Lettuce, onion and tomato on the side.
1:25 for 20km = 6:51/mile pace. Holy CRAP.
Yeah, no kidding! I’m a lousy runner, but racewalking doesn’t give you the pounding that running does. And if you look at racewalkers, they can sometimes move right past runners in a marathon.
The Marine Corps Marathon is held in October. It’s walker-friendly, but you have to maintain a steady 14-minute mile pace. Now, how hard can that be?
Can they use motorized walkers?
Walkers with wheels on the legs?
Or tennis-balls only?
Racewalkers, Graybeard.
” … passed out hooker to the free clinic …”
Hey, Dave, give a brother a head’s up next time. I think I blew bile out my eyeballs.
I think it is becoming SOP to not have anything in one’s mouth when reading this blog.
(And learn not to laugh too loudly when at work…)
Shhh, don’t ever tell my girlfriend that if I get one and she can read.
You got that right! I just cleaned coffee off my screen again.
😀
Our two?? mile run in Germany was always fun on cobble stones.
Huachuca had a similar problem in the late 90’s. The track was accurately laid out, but some genius at BDE S3 training decided it was not. So instead of using the actual start/finish line marked on the track, the APFT run would start at the exit of the turn BEFORE the start finish line, 8 laps, and finish at the entrance to the turn AFTER the start/finish line. Effectively added about 100yds to the APFT. APFT run scores increased dramatically after my PSG and I borrowed a measurement wheel and measured the track. The track actually off just a tad. About 6 inches over two miles.
SFC D, The worst PT test ever. After sitting in a classroom for a year in school at Ft Devens (300 ft MSL) I showed up at Huachuca just in time for my unit to do its annual APFT. That run at 5000 ft MSL almost Killed me, twice. I did do well in the grenade toss, but then we all did.
There’s no air and no humidity. If you’re not acclimated, you’re a wheezing gasping shriveled pile of humanity real quick!
I got tired of the sad sacks whining that the track was not measured correctly at Chanute. I shut them up by borrowing the measurement wheel and measuring the track myself. The length was correct and the constant carriers of cry-baby crap had to find something new to moan about.
I had a couple of times I went to a new unit and they’d been using the same measured out “track” for years!
Having them re-measured with an actual wheel, I found that each unit had marked 2-milers that were longer than they should’ve been. Not a big deal if it was like 5-10 feet, but they were often 100ish feet longer.
That’s one of the challenges with reserve units, but at the same time, we usually had someone run different locations for their 2-miler anyway.
The problem we had was the BDE CSM leveling accusations that all the 1SG’s were padding their training stats because of the run discrepancies. BDE S3 administered all APFT’s for NCOES bound Soldiers. CSM got pretty quiet once the distance problem was shown to him.
HEY Hey !! I’m a 61 year old ex-airman, I don’t run any longer but I ride a bicycle and usually do a ride of 15 miles down a canal towpath in about 1:10 these days, I pass a lot of younger people on these rides and when I was younger in the USAF I was capable of doing and did century rides(100 Miles) and regularly did 50 miles in 2:20 or so, my regular ride was from the barracks at RAF Feltwell via Ely to Cambridge and back during the long summer days, plus I took a long leave in Europe and bike toured thru 5 countries in the late summer of 1979…..and in my day in the USAF we didn’t have a annual PT test, but I would’ve easily passed one, in basic I ran the 1 1/2 in under 10 minutes consistently, usually 8-9 minutes and not in sneakers and shorts like I believe they currently do, but in my shiny combat boots and pickle suit…I think it’s a generational thing, when I look at some of these youngsters I see a lot of blobs staring at smart(dumb) phones compared to the days of my youth, I’m still thin, my daughters are a healthy looking pair of outgoing lookers too, 21 & 28 respectively, so it’s also a parenting thing by example.
OK, Sgt. V – you confess why you stay in shape. Pretty daughters. Gotta keep ID SARC away…
Oooooh yeah, we have had a few show up at the door over the years I wanted to show how big my foot could be, 1 clown in particular,I didn’t like the second I met him but they seem pretty settled right now with their guys, I really like the older daughters guy a lot, he looks out for her and is good people, smart, works hard at his career like she does, same for the younger but he is a typical millennial with a SJW mind set, but then so does she…..
And as a after thought, after the Feltwell-Cambridge rides when we got back the 1st stop was always “The Northside Pub” for a pint or 2 of brown & bitter and a game of 501 on the dart board…the good old carefree days
Yeah, in Texas when a new boyfriend comes over, fathers are frequently found to be cleaning their guns.
If the boy jumps in and helps you, he may be a keeper….
I never thought of doing that, but that’s a good idea, if I ever have the need to in the future, I’ll keep it mind, but right now…nah..besides, I live in NJ, the land of far too many comrade pickleturds & fat politicians, it might give them a heart attack in these parts seeing a gun
There was even a country song about that a few years back called “Cleaning This Gun”.
Although when Princess was being courted by Favorite-Son-in-Law, according to him he was too scared of me because my beard made me look like a biker.
He was terrified of stepping out of line. Not a bad deal, really.
I’ve had the honor of scoring the Air Force test twice how in the hell you miss a run they have is over me. Most didn’t even do the test because they had a profile about 70 out of 115 of the folks doing the test
If I remember right.. 300 feet ain’t going to help you much but if you need it.. Your toast
I thought the air force was supposed to be full of smart people? Why couldn’t they just do a proper measurement of a mile. I would think most other services got the run distances accurate.
The PFT course at Camp Foster on Okinawa was longer than three miles. Everyone knew it, but that was just the way it was. Didn’t matter unless you were a lazy fuck who could barely get a passing time anyway.
The Hanscom track was a freaking mess. Originally in good shape and then it went to hell. Running surface was breaking down into a loose granular material and they kept redoing the drainage so there were road cones and tape all over the track. The start stop was not clearly marked after winter degradation. Paper sign in a binder sheet cover and not sealed…
Always seems to struggle a bit more than usual on the APFT there. Assumed is was due to tripping over the far side of 55.
And, as an EN DET should have measured the freaking thing to validate.
Still better than the Drum APFT in freezing sleet and high wind. NEVER warmed up the entire run. Full APFU acted like a sail down wind and a sea anchor, up wind. APEL had a coating of ice when finished. Gotta love the North Country in the spring. If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.
Assumptions… Thought they were referencing the outdoor track. Never saw the indoor one.
Two air force based with a lack of mission. How surprising, Hanscom being best kept secret for AFMC base. Goodfellow is just garbage.
With no real mission. See why the track was f’d up in first place.
So did their motorcycles run out of gas and that’s why they couldn’t pass?
…I never had any problems with the AF physical fitness test, but I knew a lot of people who did, even after we went to the bicycle tests.
And this sort of thing always reminds me of the time in the early 90s when USAF decreed we were going to a slightly-watered down version of the Army PT test. Higher HQ was utterly insufferable on the subject…until it came out that no one could locate a SINGLE PT test for anyone at HQUSAF for at least five or six years previously.
Really never did hear much about PT after that.
Mike
I read this today and thought to myself “if a guy failed the pt run because the track was 85 fucking feet too long that jackass needed to take his training a little more seriously”
I mean, shit. I’m over 50 now and I bet I could pass the run. I wouldn’t run the 4:15 miles I did then but I would be ok
I was always amazed at how many people had issues with sit-ups. The crazy thing too
I was 38 – 39 before my Bo-Bo
I was doing 105 S/U 83 P/U my weak event was and has always been my run 16:19 2mi was my best average was 16:45 worse was when I had the flu at WLC 18:50
I re-did the run on my third to last day and barely pass ☹️️☹️️☹️️
I was never a PT stud, but when I can run my first marathon just before the age of 40, and they can’t even do 1.5 miles at a 9:20/mi pace because it’s 2 percent “too long”?
Bitches, please.
Really?
Not that it matters.
I thought the Air Force used stationary bikes for PT.
All the services should go to something like what the Fed’s use for wildland firefighters, 3 miles with a 45 pound pack in 45 minutes on a flat course with NO running, you must walk. .
That’s it, men, women, young or old, same test.
You either pass and work fire or do not pass and stay home.
Try it sometime, that test is tough. But doable by staying in shape.